but what about when the morning breaks?
but what about when the morning breaks?
a proem (when prose shtups a poem)
when the morning breaks the temperature is cool
and the sun licks my face when the morning breaks
the dog splays out on my belly
when the morning breaks
her back paws reach my shoulder
her chin
rests
on my hipbone
i don’t move a muscle because the weighted
blanket of her soft
fur is exactly what i need when the morning breaks
back home in L.A. i sleep in a tank top and shorts so i’m half way dressed for the next earthquake
In Italy i sleep naked in the humid sticky sprayed with DEET FREE anti-zanzara spray
i am very anti zanzara (i’ve never met a mosquito i liked not even an Italian one)
but i prefer to be FOR things for love for peace for freedom
for
more time
still, i am very much ANTI-zanara ANTI inflammation ANTI perspirant
when the morning breaks i pretend to be still
asleep
so the morning won’t wake me
when the morning breaks the monotony of the night
it also breaks my balls
breaks my stride
breaks my pride
breaks my heart into a gazillion pieces
(because the night has died and i forgot to sleep in it)
yesterday was a very peopley day we were in a crowd at the finish line of the Tour de France a huge, smelly, hot crowd with no exit signs in site
i love crowds - from a far
characters in crowds are less likely to notice me when i take their photo
crowds from a distance are all cheat sheets half-written characters i will
write
draw
paint about
later
i whisper a thank you when a character in the crowd
holds their hands just so when they have wild emotion in their eyes when the wind takes their hair someplace
un ex pect
ed
i can’t
wait
to charcoal it on 20x32 printmaking paper and make it rain black dust all over my barefeet later not now because now i am not distant i am in it i am part of the crowd, one of the many and maybe someplace in the distance there’s another me watching me looking forward to
writing,
drawing
painting about me
later
but now i am cornered, trapped, and will possibly be smooshed by a mass of sticky cycling fans
what if there’s an earthquake?
we had a 5.1 in Greece two weeks ago we were having dinner with friends seated outside at a charming white-walled restaurant when it hit we didn’t get up we just talked about how “we are having an earthquake right now,” and I lifted up my glass of wine so it wouldn’t spill one friend didn’t notice because he was very involved in the story he was telling
why am I thinking about earthquakes so much? (this worries me)
three days before the 1994 Northridge quake, I was working at the call center for the TV show Unsolved Mysteries.
it was a night job perfect for actors we got to talk to crazies in the night with our days wide open for auditions where we got to do crazy Hollywood tricks for the Hollywood crazies
but some of the crazies at Unsolved Mysteries weren’t at all crazy
they were helpful
lost people were found and mysteries were, indeed, solved
oh! the power of television!
i got to speak with alien abductees and i learned a lot about The Greys long before they came for me
anyway, i loved that job
we were on a 10-minute break around midnight, and I blurted out to the room of 15 or so coworkers - “in three days, we will have a big earthquake. glue down the stemware.”
i said it all casual like and calmly like no big whoop
i had no idea where it came from
the next two days i felt sick to my stomach and sad, sad, sad
on day three the earthquake hit
16 people died in a collapsed apartment building on the same block where my parents lived
it took five hours to reach my parents by car from West Hollywood to Northridge
they were okay
i was a newlywed (husband number one)
our wedding gifts a pile of broken glass in the center of our kitchen
i did not glue down the stemware
so now i’m in the Emilia Romagna Region of Italy in Rimini, and the Tour de France will end its first leg for the first time outside of France
so this is historical
so i like being part of the historical
(and the hysterical)
so i stay in the crowd and wait for the men on bicycles to zoom on by we are 150 yards from the finish line so this is cool, right? i mean, that’s what i tell myself to distract myself from my traptness i talk to a woman who seems more happy to be here than i am she’s not speaking Italian or English but for some reason i ask her where she’s from in Italglish
“Holland.”
“Are you here on vacation?”
“oh…no…no…I…am…no…no…we…I…”
I’m not sure if she’s hunting for English or Italian words or a way out of the conversation, so I try to help with…
“so you’re here for a sad reason?”
“yes.”
“oh, sorry. you don’t have to talk about it.”
so she tells me all about her daughter in Rimini who just gave birth way too soon and now the baby is in intensive care at the Rimini hospital, and they don’t know if the baby will make it she is only 1.5 kilos, but maybe they can save her and she and her husband are there at the tour de France because it’s happening here and they are here and they are taking a break from the heartbreak and there’s a man in the race who’s a Hollander and they are there rooting for the man from Holland
she sort of smiles at me through welled-up eyes and i forget all about the broken mornings and the earthquakes, and the stemware and the crowds and the aliens and i feel so much like hugging this woman who is doing the best that she can because maybe we all are doing the best that we can even though we can never know that for sure still i like to think that we are and so i want to hug this woman who is trying not think about her sick grandbaby and i think then we can share a good cry right here in the crowded humid streets of Rimini but instead i just sort of smile at her through my welled up eyes and say,
“i hope your Hollander wins.”
all photos and art are created by me.
view available art here. thanks for being here!
XO, annie